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Felix Baumgartner completes 24-mile skydive from space to Earth

Felix Baumgartner took his stratospheric leap from 128,097 feet on Sunday and landed safely on both feet around 10 minutes later, touching down so gracefully that he made the whole thing look easy.

Then he fell to his knees and raised his fists in triumph as his family, hundreds of people supporting his mission and, no doubt, people watching worldwide via the internet cheered.

It was the perfect ending to an almost perfect mission that saw the Austrian adventurer reach an unofficial speed of 706 mph during a free fall of four minutes and 19 seconds. It remains to be seen whether he broke the speed of sound as he'd hoped, but he did set unofficial records for the highest skydive and highest manned balloon flight in history. "It was harder than I expected," Baumgarter said after returning to mission control in Roswell, New Mexico, according to The New York Times. "Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It's not about breaking records anymore. It's not about getting scientific data. It's all about coming home."

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Indeed.

The 43-year-old former paratrooper broke the unofficial record retired Air Force Col. Joe Kittinger set in 1960 when he jumped from 102,800 feet during Project Excelsior. The record-setting dive from 24 miles above Roswell, New Mexico, came 65 years to the day after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 rocket. It was one hell of an accomplishment during a mission marred only by a faulty heating circuit in his visor and a bit of a tumble as he began his descent. "Couldn't have done it any better myself," Kittinger, Baumgartner's mentor, said over the radio.

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All told, Baumgartner hoped to achieve four records. He wanted to make the highest skydive, highest manned balloon flight and longest freefall ever while becoming the first person to break the sound barrier in free fall. Mission Control said it must review data gleaned from Baumgartner's space suit before knowing whether he accomplished these goals, and none of the benchmarks will be "official" until endorsed by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, which according to the BBC had a representative in Roswell.

The Austrian, whose mission had been twice delayed by weather, lifted off at 3:31pm BST as his parents -- making their first trip beyond Europe -- and thousands of well-wishers watched. Millions more followed the mission via a livestream. Inside the capsule, Baumgartner smiled broadly at liftoff and gave the "No. 1" sign with his finger as mission control erupted in applause and cheers.

It was nail-bitingly tense for the first several minutes as Baumgartner cleared the first 4,000 feet -- an area called the "dead zone" because it would be impossible to deploy a parachute should something go wrong.

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Once he cleared that hurdle, it was smooth sailing as the capsule floated gently toward the stratosphere. As the massive balloon, filled with 180,000 cubic feet of helium for the launch, rose at about 1,200 feet per minute, Baumgartner and Kittinger passed the time performing periodic systems checks and running through the pre-jump procedure -- busy work designed, in part, to occupy Baumgartner's mind and help him combat the claustrophobia he felt training for the mission. "Be sure to stay hydrated, Felix," Kittinger told the Austrian as the capsule passed 22,000 feet. "You're doing great on that altitude."

The ascent took two hours and 21 minutes, with Red Bull ticking off the milestones as they passed: the so-called Armstrong line at 63,000 feet, beyond which a pressurised suit is mandatory.

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Baumgartner's previous test jumps from 71,000 and 97,000 feet. The 102,800-foot benchmark set by Kittinger. And then the 113,740-foot record, set in 1961, for the highest manned balloon flight. Outside the capsule, cameras showed the curvature of the earth -- exaggerated by the wide-angle lens -- and the line where the blue sky of earth meets the black vastness of space.

As the capsule passed 125,000 feet, Kittinger and Baumgartner began the process of preparing for the jump -- disconnecting his suit from the capsule's oxygen system, stowing equipment and the like. And then it was time. Five years of training and countless millions of dollars -- all of it provided by Red Bull, his sponsor -- had come to this. It was time. "Okay, Felix, we're depressurising the capsule," Kittinger said. "Your guardian angel will take care of you." "The door will not open," Baumgartner replied a moment later.

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Kittinger, ever calm, told Baumgartner the pressure inside and outside the capsule hadn't yet equalised. The capsule dangled in near-vacuum beneath a whisper-thin balloon that had expanded to 30 million cubic feet. "OK," came the response, crackling over the radio. A camera inside the capsule showed Felix waiting patiently as the capsule continued to rise toward 128,000 feet. And then, the door opened. "There it is. There's the world out there," Kittinger said. The audience was right there with him, thanks to cameras mounted outside the capsule, to take in the vastness of the scene, and the enormity of what Baumgartner was about to do. The daredevil slid the seat of his capsule forward, leaving his feet dangling 24 miles above the earth. Kittinger repeated, "Our guardian angel will take care of you." With that, Baumgartner completed the last of the items on his check list, stood on a step and paused and made a short speech, most of which was unintelligible but for the line, "I'm coming home now."

And then he jumped.

It was breathtaking to see him fall away from the capsule, his breath -- and, no doubt, heart rate -- racing. Within moments he was approaching 700 mph -- the speed of sound at that altitude -- but it remains to be seen what his official speed was. He was expected to achieve supersonic speed within 35 seconds. At Mission Control, his mother, Eva Baumgartner, wiped tears from her eyes as her son, who has made more than 2,500 jumps, fell to earth.

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It didn't go exactly as planned, and early on it looked like Baumgartner might be in trouble. He was supposed to descend in the "delta position" -- head down, arms back -- immediately after leaving the capsule. But he tumbled over and over before gaining control of the situation and stabilising his descent.

His parachute deployed at 6,000 feet, and Baumgartner floated to earth beneath a bright, sunny sky. He landed on both feet without even the slightest stumble as the ground crew raced toward him. A helicopter hovered nearby to carry him to mission control.

Although Baumgartner was utterly alone in the capsule, he was backed by a team of 300 people, including more than 70 engineers, scientists and doctors in a Nasa-like mission control in Roswell.

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For all the time, money and training that went into the mission, the one thing no one knew was just what will happen to Baumgartner as he stepped from the capsule and, just 30 seconds later, achieved the speed of sound. No one had ever done it before, which was -- along with selling a bunch of Red Bull -- the point of the mission.

The team is gathering reams of data, which will be interest to companies like Space X and Virgin Galactic. "We're testing new spacesuits, escape concepts and treatment protocols for pressure loss at extreme altitudes," Red Bull Stratos medical director, Dr. Jonathan Clark, who formerly oversaw the health of space shuttle crews, told The New York Times. "There are so many things that could go wrong here that we're pushing the technical envelope."